FREED, ARTHUR
Homebase: Seattle
Stats: September 9, 1894 – April 12, 1973
Misc Notes: Arthur Freed was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina, into a musical family. They moved to Seattle, and as a child he showed a fascination with words and was known to write poems to his family's delight. A student at Broadway High School he also trained as a musician. By May 1912 he appeared in a stage comedy, Arabian Nights, at Seattle's Arcade Hall. In June 1916 Freed was billed as a "novelty musician" who performed some "talking songs" in a vaudeville revue at the Hippodrome Theatre (at Third Avenue & Cherry Street).
In May 1918, with WWI well underway, Freed participated in a concert for Jewish soldiers at Camp Lewis [today's Joint Base Lewis-McChord] where he sang his composition "Belgium, Wipe Your Tears." That September The Seattle Times noted that "Private Arthur Freed, Field Hospital No. 251, of the 13th Sanitary Train, is a song writer" who had also written "Did a Little Dugout in Your Heart For Me," and "'Till We're Thirteen Miles Past Berlin." "Freed says that this last effort required only five minutes and was accomplished between gas and platoon drills." In November 1919 Freed had -- in partnership with the prominent local theater organist Oliver G. Wallace -- opened up their Musicland shop (at 220 Pine Street). The twosome proceeded to composed many songs, solo and together, that were published by their in-house songsheet publishing company -- and they also penned tunes with Seattle's other great songsmith of their era: Harold Weeks.
One legend from Freed's music shop days is that -- according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper -- on "One gloomy, rainy Seattle day, he looked outside the window and saw a man happily dancing and singing up the street. The image stuck in his mind." By 1929 he had co-written the tune "Singin In The Rain." Two decades later, after becoming "Hollywood's top producer of musicals," the song was revived and included in the now-iconic 1952 Academy Award-nominated film Singin' in the Rain. Freed won the Academy Award for Best Picture twice, in 1951 for An American in Paris and in 1958 for Gigi. Freed is credited with producing 46 movies -- including The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat, and Gigi -- and served as president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, from 1963 to 1967.